NEWS OF TRAVEL JAPAN

Kenroku-en Garden is so beautiful, and has various countenance of changeable landscape sights and seasonal nature. Especially, on a fine morning after snowing during the previous night in winter, the maiden beauty of Kenroku-en is superficial. You can have a super experience in the white silent world, of listening to the sound of foot steps on the virgin snow while looking at beautiful scenes. Kenroku-en has a lot of old pine trees with heavy branches. In winter each tree is guarded by a lot of ropes from the top of a long straight wooden pole called “Yuki-zuri” for the sake of preventing those branches from breaking by the weight of the snow. The aspect of the pine trees with Yuki-zuri, which has the harmony of nature with the artistic triangle, is wonderful. Kenroku-en means the garden which has six characteristics, wide-scape, profound and quiet, artistic, old and elegant, water & spring and wide viewing from it. It is the garden of the “daimyo”, the lord of the samu...

Mikan, the mandarin orange, is the most popular fruit in winter in Japan. It has good sweet and adequate flavor which doesn’t obscure the taste of any other foods. For example, if you eat a mikan and drink a cup of Japanese green tea alternately, both of them can be your favorite. In addition, its weak acidity doesn’t stimulate your tongue so that you can eat any number of mikan. Moreover, the mikan has a lot of nutrition to prevent colds. Furthermore, the skin of the mikan is so thin that people can peel off by hand, and the size of a section of a mikan is similar to a larger piece of chocolate, it is easy to eat it. To sum up, the mikan is the best fruit for spending a luxurious time in winter. Kotatsu Kotatsu is a facility for keeping warm in a room in winter. The kotatsu is composed of a four-foot table with a electric heat source, a wide warm blanket and a table-board. You can warm yourself sticking your legs into the kotatsu. You can do anything in the kotatsu, eati...

February 3 is the event of the start of spring, “setsubun”, as the folklore culture of Japan next to new-year, “syogatsu” on January 1. On the setsubun day Japanese people scatter roasted soybeans and loudly say “fu-ku-wa-u-chi (luck, be inside), o-ni-wa-so-to (demons, go away)”, or recently we eat sushi rolled in nori, “eho-maki”. You can look at its ritual at any large famous shrines on February 3. I will explain the meaning of roasted soybeans scattering on the setsubun day. Scattering roasted soybeans is to purify bad vibes. January 3 is the last day of the year in the old Japanese calendar. Then demons are the comparison of the bad vibes accumulated through out a year, and luck is a lucky deity of the new year. My best recollection of setsubun is the one in Kyoto. I worked at a bank branch nearby Shimo-gamo Shrine. Banks in Japan close at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, so we welcomed ritual people from Shimo-gamo Shrine into the bank which had no bank-customers after closing t...

What is your image of blow fish? A food or a prohibited fish to eat? Blow fish alone is dangerous and can cause death. Many countries prohibit serving blow fish to eat. However in Japan, blow fish is popular to eat as an expensive gastronomic food in winter. The story of the beginnings of eating blow fish Blow fish eating had been officially prohibited for a long time from the 16th century, but common people had eaten it behind officials backs. In 1887 then prime minister, Hirofumi Ito, stayed at a high class Japanese hotel in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi prefecture. However bad weather prevented all fishing, so that the hotel had no fresh fish to serve to the prime minister. In the end the woman master, who was confronted with the problem of having no fresh fish, served their blow fish, probably it might have been kept in their pool, and prepared to receive a heavy punishment. On eating the blow fish dish, Hirofumi admired it, finally he abolished the prohibition of eating blow fish...

In Kanazawa there is an architecture which bridges the Buddhist spirit of Japan to the world. It is Daisetsu Suzuki Museum. The designer of this museum is Yoshio Taniguchi, who is a famous Japanese designer, and one of his works is the new museum of MoMA in New York. He was born in Kanazawa and learned architectural design in Harvard Graduate University. He has sensitivity which was brewed in Kanazawa, which includes the air of samurai, artistic craft work, good food, Buddhism and eastern philosophy, and western rationality learned in New York. Then Daisetsu Suzuki Museum, which was inspired by Zen Philosophy of Daisetsu Suzuki, was built by the geometric architectural method. The design is simple with only straight lines and planes by concrete, iron and stones, but implies the essences of historical Japanese architecture. It may be that Daisuke Suzuki Museum is the indicator of the relativity and the continuity between the two senses of beauty of western people and Japanese...

It may be that Kobe city in Hyogo prefecture is a food base which has been supplying a lot of new foods which come from foreign countries to Japanese people. Pizza, which was born in Italy, landed of The Kobe Port by foreign sailors. The first Lemon Soda was sold in Kobe. These were distributed from foreign countries to Japan, and these were remade so as that Japanese people would love them. On the other hand, canned coffee for the first time in the world was born in Kobe. Moreover, Kobe-beef-steak grilled on a heated iron plate in front of guests was invented in Kobe in order to enjoy freshly grilled beef. The reason that Kobe became such a base of new foods was that Kobe was the gateway of foreign culinary delights and there have been Japanese people with gastronomic desires behind Kobe. Aside from being the birth place of the first bread in Japan, Kobe is traditionally one of the cities which has various bakeries. Especially, typically German bread is the core of the Kobe b...

Happy new year to you! “Kotoshi mo yoroshiku onegai shimasu”. Well, this phrase is a convenient common greeting at the beginning of a new year in Japan, but it’s difficult to translate it into English including the nuance. It implies a kind of hope that the person saying it wants to keep an “adequate” relationship with somebody.  At the beginning of a new year for celebration, a lot of Japanese people visit shrines (or temples rarely), which are adorned with new-year iconic decorations of celebrating. This time, let’s go to visit Nishinomiya Shrine in Nishinomiya city, Hyogo Prefecture, which is between Osaka and Kobe. It enshrines Okuni-no-mikoto, who is worshipped as the god of prosperity. Nishinomiya Shrine It’s three o’clock in the afternoon of January 1. Many people are already gathering outside of the shrine. As the first shrine visit of a new year, “hatsu-mode”, begins at the stroke of midnight and a lot of people celebrate new year at shrines, so that’s a matter of ...